COUNTRY CLUB Among the yellow leaves of old oaks, six Canada geese parade as stately as dowagers in feathered coats across the golf course in single file. This is my fifty-eighth autumn and binding me more tightly each year is the garment made of all the years before. Is there nothing without its fixed point on the line of cause and effect, nothing without some history being hauled along behind? Geese, grass, and trees, I perceive them through the filter of fifty-seven previous landscapes. A golf cart rounds a nearby oak and stops. Two men in bright-yellow slacks descend. Spreading its wings, the lead goose rears up; intent on their game, the men don't notice. To own a thing is to try to freeze it in time; the men don't doubt all this belongs to them. They swing their clubs at the little white ball. Autumn, autumn, how many will follow? My sense of wonder is as thin as an old sheet washed over and over; my sense of consequence fattens above me feathered and huge. administrative or, alternatively; as money spent outside the classroom, this does not make them any less essential. "Is there money to be made here?" asked Jim Wycko an associate professor at the State University of New York in Albany who has conducted an extensive study of New York State public-school financing. "There might be. But is a lot of it going to come from what is typically called ad- ministration? I doubt it." At the moment, Advantage is not showing a profit; the funding it's getting from Chase and Kleiner Perkins is going toward easing the deficits at its schools. In this lack of profitability Advantage is no different from its rivals; with revenues of two hundred and twenty million dollars, for example, Edison Schools, the largest of the for-profit school companies, lost forty- nine million last year. In Boston, I was told that various economies of scale would allow Advantage to operate in the black when it reached its target of thirty schools; a few weeks later, Wilson told me that on the basis of more recent figures he believed the company could begtn to see a return -Stephen Dobyns much sooner than that, perhaps as early as this year-bu because the company will put that money toward opening new schools it will ahnost immediately go back into the red. One of the great discoveries of contemporary capitalism, of course, is that it is possible to become very rich with- out ever coming up with a business plan that actually works, and one of the reasons Advantage was looking for a new C.F:O. was to begin the process of preparing for an initial public offering. This, I was told, could happen at any time. T here is no lunchroom at Golden Door; the students take their meals in the classroom, under the supervision of a teacher. The ostensible rationale for this practice is that meals are part of the edu- cational program--students will be learn- ing while they eat. In one class I visited, I watched some third graders grapple with pizza. The food, courtesy of the federal school-lunch program, arrived in large quilted bags of the sort used by Domino's deliverymen The students picked up trays, collected their slices, along with a "The Zanders' book of practices has made my life one of infinite possibility. III , III III , I.. The implications for corporate and political life are extraordinary." -Warren Bennis Distinguished Professor of Business, University of Southern California, and Author ofManaging the Dream and On Becoming a Leader THE.. . Art, ()f PÇ>ssibility Tt(1(fsformms P,fofe:ss!ònal.and Personal Lffe Rosamund Stone Zander Benjal11in Zander H Ä K V.f',f1JZfll .- .... ""_0' . . -'.'NI::';'. ':" HüOl pi:i ;$.A "A wise, uplifting, and important work, a seamless blend of insight and inspiration, personal revelations, and stories drawn from the worlds of art, psychology, business, and politics." - Doris Kearns Goodwin Author of No Ordinary Time "In the presence of either Zander, one's spirit soars. Now they reveal their secrets in a deeply satisfying book. I guarantee you'll be inspired." -Gail Sheehy Author of New Passages and Hillary's Choice $22.50 at bookstores everywhere. 1:1!!51 THE NEW YORKER, OCTOBER 9, 2000 39